Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Jacksonville, Florida

Sixteen-year-old Duff Martin was missing, and his older brother, Allen, and his mother, Candi, were in a panic. His bed hadn’t been slept in, Allen’s car was gone, and it appeared some of Duff’s clothes might be missing.

Candi was hysterical.

“Oh my God! What happened? Is this because of last night? We have to call the police!”

“And tell them what, Mom? He took my car and ran away? So do you want him reported as a car thief? Dad’s already in prison. We don’t need to send Duff down that road, too,” Allen said.

Candi sat down on Duff’s bed, her shoulders slumped, tears running down her face.

“It’s all my fault. Last night, when we began talking about your daddy going to prison, Duff freaked out. I still don’t know what I said that set him off.”

“He was just six when Dad was sentenced. How much of all that did you ever tell him?” Allen asked.

Candi shrugged and wiped her face. “At the time? Not much. He was too little to understand. And then over the years, he never asked for details. He just knew it was for theft.”

Allen sat down beside her and gave her a quick hug. “What exactly were you saying right before he blew up? Do you remember?”

Candi sighed. “Lord…I don’t know. I mentioned seeing Selma Garrett’s obituary, and he asked who she was, and I think I said…she was the woman who accused Zack of stealing her jewelry. And then Duff got this funny look on his face and asked, ‘What jewelry?’”

“Oh yeah,” Allen said. “And I added they were family heirlooms, valued at over a quarter of a million dollars, that went missing while Dad was painting at her house.”

Candi nodded. “Something about that set Duff off. When he jumped up from the table all pale and shaking, then started hitting himself on the head and crying, I knew something was wrong. I should have talked to him last night, but he wouldn’t let me in. And now this!”

“But why would that have upset him? After all this time? And what about all that would have made him run away?” Allen asked.

“I don’t know, but he’s gone, and I’m scared of what might happen to him,” Candi said.

“Does he have access to money?”

Candi gasped. “His college fund!”

“Quick, Mom…check his bank account,” Allen said.

Candi pulled up their joint account, checked it, and groaned.

“There’s a thousand dollars missing.”

Allen nodded. “Okay, then he’s not about to go robbing some Quick Stop for money. Call him to see if he answers.”

“Yes, yes,” Candi said, and quickly sent Duff a text.

Allen gave her a hug. “Okay. We’ve reached out. Now we need to wait and see if he responds. The bottom line here is that he’s sixteen, so he’s a minor. He wasn’t abducted, so the cops will call him a runaway. And the only way the police will get involved is if we press charges for him taking the car, and I’m not going to do that. Something is going on with Duff. He’s a good kid, and I’m not going to fly off the handle here and make a bad thing worse.”

“You’re right,” Candi said, and then broke into tears again. “But he’s just a kid, and we just put up the Christmas tree, and now he’s gone.”

“So pray, Mama. Pray for a miracle that we get him home.”

***

Duff Martin didn’t run away from home, but he was on a mission. Something his mother said last night had triggered a long-forgotten memory. All he could think afterward was what if it was my fault? And the only way he could know for sure was to go back to the place where it all began.

So he packed up a bag and headed north, driving out of Florida into Georgia, going back to Blessings, the little Georgia town where he’d spent the first six years of his life. He didn’t tell anyone where he was going, because in his sixteen-year-old mind, this was his problem to solve.

He’d snuck out of the house just after 2:00 a.m., arrived in Blessings about 5:00 a.m., and immediately got a room at the only motel. It wasn’t the cleanest, but he didn’t have money to waste on the nicer bed-and-breakfast he’d seen online, and this place was a roof over his head.

He stretched out on the bed, so tired he ached, but this wasn’t the time to sleep. Now that he was here, he was uncertain where to start. He had memories, but they were vague, and he wasn’t sure how much of them was real.

He couldn’t remember the house they’d lived in.

He couldn’t remember the name of the lady his dad had been working for. He’d heard his mother say it, but he was so freaked out about the rest of the story that it didn’t soak in. The only things he could remember for sure were being in first grade at the elementary school and the lady who babysat him after school. Miss Margie. He’d called her Miss Margie.

His first instinct was to start driving the streets of Blessings and see what rang true. He wasn’t on a schedule, but as soon as the town began opening up, he took off down Main, oblivious to the holiday atmosphere and decorations, and started his first loop through the residential areas, looking for houses and faces he might remember.

When his phone signaled a text, and he saw who it was from, he sighed.

They knew he was gone.

***

Even without snow, Christmas spirit was alive and well in Blessings. The little town was in full-on holiday mode.

Decorations were hanging from every streetlight on Main.

There was an ongoing storefront-decorating contest and a trophy to be won for the business that had the best Christmas theme, and the upcoming Christmas parade on Saturday with more trophies to win.

Because snow in this part of Georgia was almost always a no-show, Crown Grocers had brought in its own brand of snow by setting up a snow-cone stand at the north corner of the parking lot, next to the roped-off area where they were selling Christmas trees.

Bridgette could feel the magic of the season all the way to her bones as she drove down Main on the way to work.

In the months since she and Wade had become a couple, the only awkward moment between them had been walking back into the home she’d grown up in and accepting it belonged to him now.

Then as it turned out, it wasn’t as hard as she had feared. Her brother Hunt had updated and remodeled it to such a degree before the sale that she soon forgot the old house and saw only the one it was today—the one that belonged to Wade. And the first time they made love in that house, in his bed, memories of the old house were no longer visible to her there.

Making love to Wade was passion at its best, but it was feeling cherished that had put the sparkle in her eyes and the bounce in her step. When she thought about how close she’d come to messing it up, she shuddered. He was now, and would forever be, the best thing to ever happen in her life.

She braked at the stoplight, and while she was waiting for it to turn green, it gave her a few moments to check out the decorations going up in the storefronts. They weren’t quite on the level of Bloomingdale’s or Saks Fifth Avenue in New York City, but they were Blessings’s best, and she couldn’t wait to see the finished displays.

The day started out cool—right at fifty degrees, but with a promise to warm up to the mid-eighties around noon—and she had a busy day ahead of her with end-of-month reports.

December marked the beginning of a busy season at the feed store, including the new gift section Wade had created a few months ago. Among the items available for sale there were little packs of dog and cat toys, halters and spurs for the locals who fancied themselves cowboys, and colorful bandannas, along with a whole series of country-style Christmas ornaments, and Made in Georgia specialties like peach jams and jellies.

Bridgette had always enjoyed working here, but the fire that gutted the warehouse last year, resulting in the death of a long-time employee, had taken the heart out of all of them. Then Wade came on as manager and changed the vibe to such a degree that the store barely resembled what it had been.

The stoplight turned green, and she drove through the intersection. Once she reached the feed store, she parked and hurried inside out of the cold.

***

Wade was on his way to the Crown to pick up an order of Christmas cookies for the break room, but he was thinking about Bridgette.

They’d spent the weekend together at his house. The house where she’d grown up was now the place where they played house. Cooking together. Watching movies together. Making love in his bed, and on the living room sofa, and in the shower, and wherever else they were when the notion struck. But she’d gone home after Sunday dinner to do the chores needed at her own place, and waking up alone this morning made her absence even more pronounced.

He was looking forward to work, knowing he’d be spending the day with her, as he pulled into the Crown parking lot. Then he saw Bridgette’s brother Junior on the far side of the parking lot and waved as he got out. Junior saw him and smiled, then returned to unloading and setting up the new shipment of Christmas trees.

Once inside the store, Wade headed straight to the bakery.

“Hey, Sue. I have an order of Christmas cookies to pick up.”

“Morning, Wade. I just boxed them up,” she said and went to get them. He took them up front to pay before heading on to the store.

Bridgette’s car was already in her usual parking spot when he arrived. He parked and hurried into the store with the cookies, greeting customers and workers alike as he went down the hall to the office area, then paused outside her office, peering at her through the wreath dangling over the window of her door. She was laser-focused on the computer screen, her fingers flying across the keyboard.

He knocked and walked in.

“Hey, sweetheart! I missed you this morning,” he said, and then stole a quick kiss.

Bridgette cupped the side of his face.

“I missed you, too.”

“I brought cookies for the break room, but you get first dibs. Take out all you want now, because they won’t last long.”

“Ooh, yum,” she said as he opened the box. “I love iced sugar cookies.”

“There are some gingerbread men on the bottom. Dig through and get what you want,” he added.

“I’ll get some out for you, too,” Bridgette said, then grabbed a handful of napkins, laid out a sugar cookie and a gingerbread man for herself, and then two each for him. “There, you can take the rest to the break room. I’ll put yours in your office.”

A couple of hours later, her sugar cookie was gone and the gingerbread man stashed in her desk. She was almost through with the monthly reports when she realized the total between receipts and deposits was off. There was data in the computer showing sales, but the total of monthly deposits didn’t balance out, so she went back over her input again, then pulled up the readouts from the front register until she found the exact amount she was off. The transaction was there, but that day’s money deposit was short $532.50—the exact amount of a receipt she had for a feed purchase.

Her heart sank.

Either someone pocketed the money, or gave away the feed and hoped no one would catch it. In all the years she’d worked here, this had only happened a couple of times, and both times it had been theft.

Once a clerk pocketed the money, and the other time, a man working in the warehouse did his buddy a favor, loaded up feed, wrote out a ticket for it to balance out the inventory count, and hoped no one would catch the money missing.

She read the transaction again and saw the register code. It belonged to Donny Corrigan. But that didn’t always mean he was the one who’d rung it up. If he’d stepped away from the register to help someone else, any employee could have used it to check a customer out, without keying in their own code. It would be an easy way to take money with no expectation of getting caught.

The next thing Bridgette did was check the time cards to see where Donny was that day, and if he was in the store at that time. She found where he’d clocked in, and then three hours later had clocked out and hadn’t come back that whole day.

She frowned, trying to remember why, and then she realized that was the day Donny’s wife went into labor with their first baby. He had clocked out, but in his panic, it appeared he had not counted out his till, which left his code in the register, which now made everyone else in the store a possible suspect.

She picked up her phone and called Wade.